Day 1 of 7 • WE Greater Than ME – Joy Producing Generosity

God has challenged us at the Journey to Step Up to carry out His plan and vision for our church. While Stepping Up to where God calls is never easy, it is always worth it. Why? Because God always leads us to good places and those places are not only a blessing to us personally, but also a blessing to those around us. This is the undercurrent of the Stepping Up initiative.

As a church, we believe God has blessed us in order to be a blessing to others. We believe the primary way we grow in God and continue walking in His blessings is through laying our lives down for others. There are three pieces to the Stepping Up vision that enable us to do this: (1) Creating excellent environments where people can encounter God, (2) Reaching people right where they are both locally and globally and, (3) Offering help and hope to people hurting the most in our community. The recipients of each of these three areas in Stepping Up are people because we are convinced that the way of Christ is found through loving others in His Name.

Most of us want to be used by God; yet, we just struggle at times to live reliant upon God. If you can relate to this struggle, welcome to the club. The problem though is that the only way we can follow Christ is through the denial of our self. In the same sentence of Matthew 16, Jesus calls His followers to deny themselves as He urges them to follow Him. We have to lay our plans down in order to experience the beauty of walking in His. Before we can experience the joy found in living for others, we have to die to self. Again, this is the undercurrent of Stepping Up.

What if the things longed for inside of you are actually satisfied through loving others beside you? The invitation to living with open-hands towards others is found supremely through generosity in the local church. Yet, so many of us struggle living generous lives and miss out on the blessing of following where God leads. In order to walk in the blessings God has for you, we are inviting you to continually lay your life down before Christ to be a blessing for others. Let’s take the next six days to examine how God enables us to be part of this kind of movement.

Question for reflection – Why is it contrary to common thought to seek blessing through loving others?